Posts Tagged «ladee»

NASA has successfully completed the first test of the International Space Station’s new OPALS laser communications system. OPALS links the ISS to an observatory here on Earth at very high speeds (around 50 megabits per second), allowing for the real-time transmission of high-resolution video among other things. This is orders of magnitude faster than existing radio-based links, and is a significant step forward for future space exploration.

Using their new lunar laser link, NASA and MIT have succeeded in beaming data from the Moon at 622 megabits per second. This impressive feat is an important step in moving away from radio communications, which have reached the limit in the face of the new data demands for work in space.

NASA is preparing to launch the Lunar Laser Communications Demonstration (LLCD), a testbed that will use lasers to send and receive data between Earth and the Moon. This will be the first time that NASA uses lasers instead of conventional S-band radio waves to communicate with spacecraft, allowing for massive data rates of up to 600 megabits per second, while also consuming much less power and requiring much smaller antennae.

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